And they're off! Autumn is here and there's plenty of colour starting to show which, by the end of the month, will be at its height.

One of the first trees to turn is this rather overlooked maple. It's Freeman's Maple, Acer x freemanii, a hybrid between two North American species, Red maple (Acer rubrum) and Silver maple (Acer saccharinum). Most are the cultivar 'Autumn Blaze' which has predictably red autumnal hues, and October is their best month. The rest of the year you might be hard pressed to recognise one, their leaves are midway between their parents and look rather like a small sycamore, but they do go in for a splash of red in the spring too when their flowers appear in March before the leaves.